Amy Nelder is in private and corporate collections in the United States, Canada, Hong Kong, Brazil, Israel, Thailand, Mexico, Russia, Switzerland and Germany including the Zurich Insurance corporate collection (NYC), Sports Engineering and Recreation Asia, LTD (Bangkok), Buena Vista Café (SF), Tosca Café (SF) and GESD Capital Partners (SF). She is also well known throughout San Francisco for her mural work that graces such sites as the Chinese Charity Cultural Services Center in Chinatown, San Francisco Board of Education Executive Administration Building, the State of California Family Support Bureau, and the District Attorney’s Victim Services Center. She has appeared regularly in local newspapers as well as local and national television programs including the San Francisco Chronicle, the San Francisco Examiner, Evening Magazine on KPIX, CNN, Fox News, MSNBC, and Art Business News.
Amy has been selling her fine art for nearly 20 years. She began as a Mythic Realist – painting upbeat, bright, and magical urban scenes of great cities from San Francisco to New Orleans to New York to Paris. Most recently she developed what she coins Pop Trompe L’oeil – images incorporating the humor of Pop Art with the seriousness of the trompe l’oeil genre. Amy is a native of San Francisco - a 4th-generation San Franciscan with deep roots in the City. She comes from a long line of civic and community service on both sides of her family - a factor which heavily influenced her decision years ago to become the Forensic Artist for the San Francisco Police Department, a position which involved working primarily with traumatized survivors and witnesses of violent crimes to produce composite sketches of suspects; she also worked with the dead to create 2-dimensional craniofacial reconstructions of unidentified human remains for purposes of identification, as well as executing many other otherwise-obscure types of crime-related art for not only the SFPD but also the FBI and other law enforcement agencies. Although she was already a full-time professional painter before she took on that emotionally weighty role, her work with the Police Department became a heavy influence on her approach to painting, adding not only certain temperamental elements to her process but also a therapeutic component for her as an artist.
Amy continues to create work that brightens but also heals and gives joy, humor, tenderness and relief to its audience, including herself. Earlier in life she trained as a professional opera singer and was invited to study by top instructors from both the Metropolitan Opera in NY and the San Francisco Opera. As a pop singer she opened for such greats as Ray Charles and was courted by Santana management.
Color has always been a huge factor in my work, reflecting not only the emotion that I feel when I paint, but the emotion I want to feel, and the emotions I want my viewer to feel. Color tells the story. But changes in emotion are also often followed by changes in the ordinary objects we use in our everyday lives. The clues on a breakfast table can narrate a whole passage of events from the night before. With my new work, which I am calling my "Pop Trompe L'oeil", I am interested in mixing the traditional dark, serious Trompe L’oeil with the whimsical humor of Pop Art to investigate relationships – the appearance and heroism of everyday objects reflecting the heroism of ourselves in our own everyday situations. I love the element of surprise: At first, you’re looking at a dark, sexy wine painting – but then you blink, and there’s a box of your favorite cereal paired with a $400 bottle of French red, and it’s funny – but it also tells a story.